


exercises in conversation

by logorrhea



Category: Suicide Squad (2016)
Genre: Conversations, F/M, Functioning Relationship, Post-Canon, smoop
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-06
Updated: 2016-08-06
Packaged: 2018-07-29 17:00:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,518
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7692433
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/logorrhea/pseuds/logorrhea
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>or, how they've come to rub off one another, as couples are wont to do.</p>
            </blockquote>





	exercises in conversation

**Author's Note:**

> Oh god what possessed me to write WAFF for this ship...

After he's successfully broken her out of Belle Reve and they've had celebratory just-escaped-prison-again sex on their massive king-size mattress, Harley punches him point-blank on the face.

He curls his lips back, unprepared for the pain, and blinks rapidly to clear his vision. He lies still against the bed for a while before working his jaw to make sure it wasn't broken.

She'd been holding back, then.

"Whether that was for coming so late or not bringing your favorite kind of coffee," he starts, "I apologize."

Harley stares at him, bewildered, and Joker thinks she'll punch him again. She does, but not at his face. Rather, she throws herself on top of him and beats his bare chest weakly.

"Dummy," she growls, "That's not why I punched you."

"Oh?" he cards through her pigtails, tightening his grip experimentally before cutting her loose, "What was it for then?"

"For pushing me out of the plane!" She grabs onto his shoulders and slithers up, looking right at him with furious eyes. "How could you? I thought you had died."

He frowns, thumbing at the edge of her lipstick.

"I didn't notice you mourning."

"I cried my heart out on the goddamn rooftop you jerk," she retorts, "And I was this close to selling out the whole world to revive you."

He laughs.

"I'd be more flattered if you had done so."

"She wanted me to serve her." She pushes herself up without breaking eye contact. "Above all else."

"I see," he says, tracing the dip of her waist and the curve of her cheek. "I don't think she would have revived me then, I would kill anyone else you answered to."

"I serve only you," she answers, looking somehow fiercer than before.

How she manages to make _him_ smolder under her gaze, he never understands. But he swallows and traces the space between her breasts, tracing the usual words.

"I know," he murmurs, kissing her, "You're Daddy's Little Monster, aren't you?"

"The one and only," she beams, eager to be praised, to be possessed, and just like that, the tension vanishes. She falls against him and he pulls her close, drinking in her form, her scent, _her_.

"God," he mutters against her hair, "How I missed you, Harley-pie."

-

It was an open secret that he had gone mad without her. Well, he had always been mad, but it had been a controlled madness. Without her around, he couldn't calculate, couldn't plan, could barely eat or sleep.

It was impossible to function, when he kept replaying the nighttime crash, over and over again. What could he have done differently, what precautions could he have taken, how should he have instructed her to act, and so forth.

Assaulted with uncertainty -- where she was and who was holding her and whose necks he would have to wring to _get her back_ \-- he lapses into a state reminiscent of the time before... well, before her.

The days bleed into one another and he shoots the soldiers who give him bad news. And it's all bad news.

We have yet to locate her sir; our sleeper agents have got no leads sir; please be patient sir we're doing our best.

Over and over again.

At some point, he snaps and comes full circle, returning to the degree of functionality he had achieved with her at his side. The catch is, she's still not _back_ even though he's eating and sleeping and plotting about as consistently as she could get him and if she's not back then what's the fucking point?

Domesticity hardly becomes him -- hell, it hardly becomes her. But she had liked some degree of it and as it's all he can do, he tries.

Look sweetheart, he says, see how neatly I arranged our knives and guns? I even bought four dozen red roses and baby clothes, so won't you please come home?

The semicircle of slaughter seems to do the trick, for it's when he's retreated to the center of it that his men finally find her. And for a moment, it's enough to know she's alive and well.

-

The one upside to Harley's imprisonment had been the camaraderie she established with people who the Joker would have otherwise not given the time of day. It was through the connections made by the ragtag bad-good-guys' team that he planned to amass an army that could go head-to-head with the goody-two-shoes league.

Nevermind that the most potent member, who had escaped death dozens of times and was now charmingly marked as 'killed in action' for his services against the Enchantress was proving to be most uncooperative.

El Diablo has holed himself up in another hole. For penance, Harley tells him, though she understands as well as him.

He doesn't really know what to say, normally his character and reputation bring people _to_ him. Of course, those were active criminals and El Diablo was staunchly retired, so maybe that was the difference.

Still, it's not like the tattoo'd fireman is going to kill his teammate's... partner. And he's trying his best not to strangle the old man.

Surprisingly, it is El Diablo that breaks the uneasy silence (following his sound rejection of world domination following a trouncing of the Justice League, mind you).

"Tell me," he prompts, voice dry from disuse, "What's the difference between me and you?"

Now that, the Joker is not expecting.

He raises his not-eyebrows and shrugs.

"Aside from how you can incinerate all of Gotham in the pouring rain, you mean?"

"Did you kill women and children?" he asks, changing the subject.

He laughs at that.

"Do I look like a gentleman to you, El Diablo?" He leans into the hole, dressed in his Sunday finest, and smiles. He hopes his teeth glint.

"I was the same," the other man answers. "I didn't give a shit until I burned down my house with my family in it." He crawls out of the suffocatingly small space and looks at the Joker with unabashed jealousy. "So I ask again: what's the difference between me and you? Why do you get to keep your woman, while I don't even get a corpse to bury?"

El Diablo manages something few others, even hardened criminals, could boast of. He manages to get in the last word, with the Joker.

"Leave me from your grand schemes," he commands, shoving the other, "And tell your girl my debts are settled."

"I'll write you down as a maybe?" the Joker tries, after Santana has stalked back inside.

-

A couple half-foiled schemes later and he stumbles upon a part of the Enchantress episode Harley hadn't thought to share with him.

Which of course fuels his curiosity.

He ends up teasing it out of her in the most pleasurable way, slowly sinking all the way into her before remaining stock-still for a minute or two and then pulling out. She grinds her teeth and bucks her hips and arches her back and looks, in short, entirely fuckable, but he successfully denies her for the better part of an hour, painstakingly pushing in before sliding out.

"Alright, alright," she cries, eyes squeezed shut from being on-edge, "I'll tell you, promise, just fuck me already!"

He teases her a couple times more before picking up the pace and she climaxes soon after.

"Well?" he demands, stroking her various tattoos while basking in a similar afterglow.

"Oh, ah..." she snuggles closer to him, "She... the Enchantress... showed me the future."

"What sort of future?"

"We were married," she sighs, dreamily, "And I was helping you get ready for work. There was a house in the suburbs and we had two children... probably a white picket fence too."

Had her absence not pushed him past the brink of insanity, twice, he would have laughed. But as he thinks back to his own haphazard flirtation with domesticity -- with baby clothes and butter knives and child-sized handguns and grenades...

He clutches onto her tighter and can't quite believe his own words.

"Do you still want that?"

Evidently, neither can Harley. She freezes, then squirms out of his embrace, rising up to look at him.

"What?"

"The house in the suburbs with two kids and a picket fence," he repeats, hoping it doesn't sound as absurd as it sounds. "Do you still -- "

"Puddin'," she stares at him, bewildered, "Are you asking me to marry you?"

"I -- " don't want to be without you, ever again, never makes it out, because she punches him again.

"Ow -- fuck," he snarls, grabbing her throat and reversing their positions in the blink of an eye, "I try to give you what you want and that's how you repay me, Harley-pie?"

"I'm sorry you're so dumb," she blithely apologizes, rolling her hips and blowing him a kiss, "But that's not _you_ and I've always wanted you."

Absurdities aside, he had bared his heart and she had punched him in the face.

"I'll show you me," he smiles, leaning in with all his teeth.

Harley yelps, half-pain and all-pleasure. She'd let him bleed her dry, he remembers, and realizes he'd do the same.


End file.
